Shadow of a Doubt
by HaiJu
Summary: It was over. The lab, the experiments, the secrets… all of that was in the past. Wasn't it? Sequel to Phantom of Truth
1. With Weary Glaze

_This is a sequel to the fanfic **Phantom of Truth**, which is a good story in its own right and you should totally read that first. Readers, please check the notes at the end for important info!_

* * *

**Shadow of a Doubt**

* * *

Part One: Ties that Bind

* * *

There should be some kind of decency law against having to answer interview questions in a hospital gown, Danny thought dully as he stared into the gleaming eyes of a dozen cameras. Microphones hovered around his face like large and annoying bumblebees.

Mom sat on the bed next to him, holding his hand. He didn't like it; it made him uncomfortable for more than one reason. What sixteen year old lets his mom hold his hand on live TV? The embarrassment factor alone would be enough reason to snatch it away from her.

And then there was the part of him, as irrational and cruel as it might be, that resisted the idea of his only remaining healthy hand being trapped between the fingers of the woman who had destroyed the other one. She had—she had—

_Danny could feel each individual tendon as the unseen person pulled on it, yanking experimentally, forcing the fingers to twitch and move. They... she... kept doing it over and over. Aside from the pain, which after the first few hours he'd begun to develop a dull, desperate resistance to, they were starting to cramp from the repeated movement. Danny sagged in relief as the force eased, leaving his fingers twitching and the nerves raw—only to spike into knifelike agony as she tore the tendons off completely._

"We all found it strange that you made it all the way home by yourself," a woman was saying.

She was a reporter, Danny realized, taking in her neat tailored suit with the pretty pink blouse peeking out between demure gray lapels. Sam would scoff at such a frilly piece of clothing. Danny pictured Sam sitting in her kitchen, eating cereal and watching him sit like a mute idiot on TV. He wondered what she thought of it all.

What were they doing again?

The woman turned to him expectantly, her too-pleasant smile painted in gaudy coral lipstick. She must have introduced herself before, but Danny didn't remember.

"Why didn't you stop and ask for help? You must have passed dozens of places, gas stations, convenience stores, houses."

Danny shrugged, wishing his mom would let go of his hand so he could fidget with the sheets. It felt too weird doing nothing, like he was on display. "I dunno."

He'd spent the first week in the hospital—what he could remember of it—in a blissful haze, isolated from the world, sheltered by his own unconsciousness. Now he felt besieged by endless questions. First from the doctors, then by police; even his own family only showed up in a pack to stand around his bedside and gaze at him hungrily.

"I guess that was kinda stupid."

"Nobody's saying that," the woman said smoothly. "We just want to know what happened."

"After a while I just wasn't thinking that straight," Danny admitted, tapping his fingers on the inside of his mom's palm. She squeezed them reassuringly. He resisted the urge to yank them out of her grip. "I just... I knew I had to get home, you know?"

"And how did you get home?"

"I walked." It was just that simple. He'd been too weak to fly, so he'd picked a direction that "felt" right and walked. Danny had only patches of memory from that time, of rough, hot mountainside and deserted roads. He remembered hiding from threatening white sedans with tinted windows, dropping into the roadside ditch to avoid the searching glare of headlights. That was the last clear image Danny could pull from the cobwebs of his faulty memory.

Mostly it was just an endless impression of exhaustion and pain, and some inborn stubbornness driving him to put one foot in front of the other until he'd found himself at his own front door.

The woman leaned in conspiratorially. Her concern was as artificial and sickly-sweet as her perfume. "That's an awful long way, Danny."

"Yeah." Danny dropped his gaze to his lap where his mother's hand entangled his own, and wished it was over.

* * *

"You didn't tell Dad."

Jazz flinched, losing her place in the book. She looked up at her little brother; he was staring down at the puzzle Sam had brought him. As she watched, he scowled and dumped out the pieces, starting over.

Jazz studied Danny, trying to decide what had driven him to ask. Gratitude? Hurt? Mild curiosity?

He slouched quietly in the hospital bed, sitting up on his own now even though he was still surrounded by dozens of pillows. His right arm was completely encased in a thick white sling, only the barest tips of his fingers showing out of the heavy cast that rested inside.

The cast's bright blue casing peeked out, already grafittied with "Jack Fenton", "Tuck was here" and a smiling purple spider. Visiting Danny was supposed to be limited to family only, but his friends had somehow snuck in anyway. As far as Jazz was concerned, those two were as much family to Danny as she was.

Danny's expression was closed, his attention apparently absorbed in maneuvering the puzzle pieces. It was one of those colorful abstract things, like a Tetris game in plastic. When placed the right way, all geometric shapes would fit together in its little plastic tray, forming one perfect square.

"No, I didn't tell anyone," she said evenly. Then, with a little more uncertainty than she would have liked, "Was that... the right thing to do?"

He gave her an odd look. Jazz smiled self-consciously, pulling a strand of her long red hair over her shoulder and smoothing it between her fingertips. It wasn't like her to ask that kind of question; she was supposed to be the big sister after all. She'd spent so much time second-guessing herself; even now that it was all over, she wasn't sure she'd made the right decision.

Danny shrugged, eyes falling back to the puzzle. "Probably wouldn't have changed things. And now... I'd rather they not know. You know?"

Jazz sighed, feeling that burden lurch right back into place. Even if Danny wanted it, she wasn't so sure it was a good idea to keep it from their parents now that... now that Danny wasn't so capable of fighting off ghosts. If he was attacked, would she, Tucker and Sam be able to protect him alone? Would he still try to fight, even in his condition?

All she ended up saying was, "Yes, I know."

He was slow to respond, blinking, processing, visibly considering that simple statement before he nodded. At least in part it had to be the drugs. They were keeping him on two different kinds of sedatives, one for pain and another because he'd apparently been displaying "symptoms of anxiety." Jazz wasn't sure exactly what that entailed, but she didn't like the way the doctor had said it so carefully, as if glossing over something much more awful.

Visions of her little brother screaming and struggling as nurses shoved needles in his arm sprang up unasked for in her mind's eye. Jazz shuddered and hastily pushed such notions out of her head. If it been that bad, the doctors would have told them. Surely they would have told the family if it had gotten that bad…

"Why didn't you?" Again no inflection, no real indicator of what he was truly thinking. No eye contact either, although the puzzle let them both pretend he had a good reason.

It took her a moment to get back on track with the conversation. Mom. Dad. The secret.

"Why didn't I tell?" Jazz shrank back in the chair and wrapped her arms around herself, hugging the book. "I was sure you were dead."

"Sure?" he echoed, fingers stilling on the pieces.

She nodded tightly. "It was the BOOmerang." Stupid as the name was, it was one of the best inventions their parents had come up with, a tracking device that faithfully found Danny across countries, dimensions, even time. At least, it had before. "As soon as we realized you were gone, we... Sam, Tucker and I tried to use it."

They'd tried every detection tool in the Fenton arsenal. Jazz had even gone to Vlad in the end, hoping that his controlling tendencies would mean he'd somehow kept tabs on Danny. She'd even suspected that Vlad himself was the culprit and she'd find her little brother stashed away in some shielded corner of the millionaire's mansion.

That conversation had been… frustrating. Vlad was not cooperative. Beneath his sneers and the petty jabs at her father, the man had been genuinely worried—definitely annoyed—and just as lost as they were. It had been the nail in the coffin for Jazz, that not even Vlad had a clue.

"It kept blinking 'no matching ectosignature detected' and that's all it would do. We've used that thing for years, Danny. How could it not work? Unless you were... unless there was nothing to find."

Jazz gripped the edges of the heavy book, feeling irrationally, stupidly guilty. It was as if she hadn't had faith in him. That hadn't been it at all. She just... couldn't find him. "If it was true, if you really were, if you were gone, I couldn't just tell Dad. Not right away. Or Mom, either. They'd be... grieving, and they'd feel so guilty and confused about your ghost half with no way to resolve it. I just couldn't do it. Not yet."

"Oh," he said. The puzzle lay in the folds of the sheet gathered in his lap, unsolved, the pieces jumbled and crowding each other out of the frame.

Silence stretched between them, leaving her in the swirling darkness of her doubts. Jazz wished that Danny could banish all of them; tell her she'd done everything she should have. Except she hadn't. The heavy tome in her lap weighed her down, its sharp, new corners biting through her jeans. She hadn't found him. He'd been forced to find his way home alone.

"There was... this thing," Danny began slowly, startling her. "At the place they were keeping me. It worked as some kind of dampening field. Limited my powers. No intangibility, or ectoblasts. No shields. I bet that's why you couldn't track me."

"Oh," she breathed, hardly daring to speak. This was the first time he'd volunteered any real information on what had happened to him.

"It's nice to know," he added, speaking maybe half to himself, "why nobody came flying in on the Specter Speeder to break me out. You couldn't find me."

"We couldn't," Jazz agreed. She hoped he heard all the regret that was in those words. How ardently she wished they weren't true. "We tried, but you were just... gone."

The silence settled in again, heavy and bleak. The clock on the wall that ticked just a little bit off time filled the room with its soft, steady beat.

"You were captured by someone," she prompted gently.

Danny paused, then nodded slowly. He was moving the puzzle pieces again, meticulously turning them this way and that, trying to get them to line up. "Guys in White. They have this whole lab... facility... thing out in the mountains, just for ghost experiments."

"Experiments? You mean... you? You were... " Horror crawled to the forefront of her mind as the idea sank in. Jazz had scientists for parents. She knew very well what kinds of "studies" a ghost could undergo in the name of science. An even more horrible thought came in on the heels of the first. Maybe Danny hadn't gotten all of his injuries from escaping. Maybe that hand… why it was so bad… It was too terrible to think about, but the idea wouldn't leave her mind.

Danny seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because his hand strayed up to cradle the one in the sling and cast.

"Yeah." A little bitterness crept into his tone. "That was me. Test subject number 0013. Such 'fascinating' material."

"Oh Danny, I'm so sorry." What could she say? What could anybody possibly say? That was too… that was too much. She pressed her hands to her lips, tears welling in her eyes. "I'm so sorry."

He shrugged, frowning down at the last two pieces. The configuration was wrong, Jazz noticed absently. The last tile wouldn't fit. He'd have to start over. Somewhere he'd gone wrong.

"It's over. Forget it."

Jazz bit her lip, worry setting in. It wasn't something Danny could just forget, she knew. He would have to talk about it and deal with it, and soon; but she didn't have the heart to play psychologist tonight. Instead, she moved to the edge of the bed and wrapped her arms around his thin shoulders, holding him as tight as she dared.

Still slow, even a little tentative, Danny's arm came up to wrap around her. Fingers brushed against her face, and she felt him hesitate. Think. Sinking in past the sedatives.

"You're crying," he said, surprise in his voice. "Why?"

"Why?" Jazz half snorted, making a peculiar sound thanks to her already congested nose. "Because you're my little brother; and they—" They'd done horrible things to him. Almost killed him. "Of course I'm upset." She paused, wondering just how out of it he was if he had to ask that question. "I love you, Danny. Don't forget that."

His hand closed over her shoulder and he squeezed back tightly. "I won't, Jazz."

Danny relaxed into her embrace, nodding against her shoulder.

"You need to sleep," she told him.

"Not gonna," he mumbled.

"You already are." Jazz sniffed and swiped a hand across her eyes, then pushed him gently back into the nest of pillows. She moved quietly across the room and flicked off the light, found her way to the cot set up under the window by memory, and curled up under the blanket.

Plastic clacked against plastic; Jazz opened her eyes. Danny was sitting up again, silhouetted against the light spilling in from the hallway. His fingers shifted, and she caught a flash of color in his lap. He sat there in the dark, staring down unseeing at the unfinished puzzle.

* * *

_Part one :: tbc..._

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**A/N:**

Well, here goes nothing.

Welcome to the sequel of Phantom of Truth! It will be a somewhat different creature, but in a good way I hope. As always, concrit is greatly appreciated! All reviews will be loved. :)

The chapter and section names will probably shift around a bit at first, just fyi, since I'm still experimenting with them.

**Thanks**

Oh gosh, I had a ton of help on this fic.

First, deepest thanks to **MyAibou** and **Phantomrose96**, my current betas. I'll be switching out secondary betas every month or so because I rather like them sane, but MyAibou's in it for the long haul. Send her cookies. She'll need them.

Also thank you to **AnneriaWings** for all of your support and advice, on top of being my first beta reader and soldiering through the cruddy first draft. Thanks to Phanowrimo friends who joined me in banging out 50,000 words this April, and Critic in Residence who humors me rolling on the floor and moaning about my fanfiction woes.

(and by the way those three are awesomely talented DP writers, go check out their fics!)

**Canon Notes**

This timeline diverges from canon at the end of Season 2 right before Reality Trip, so Reality Trip and Season 3 are not canon for this fic. Most importantly, Vlad is not mayor, no ice powers, and D-Stabilized didn't happen. Oh, and no PP. That's pretty obvious though.

**Changes from PoT**

I realized after writing Phantom of Truth that Amity Park was in the Great Lakes part of the US, which is nowhere near any kind of desert. So the GIW facility has been moved to a particularly dry and unwelcoming corner of a secluded mountain range in NY state. The Author has spoken.

I think that's it, folks! Let's do this thing!

-Hj


	2. A Strange Impression in my Head

"Was the water still hot, Mads?"

"Yes dear," Maddie said absently, though it could have been ice cold for all she noticed.

She stepped out of the tub and reached for a towel, pushing her wet hair back with an impatient flick; it had grown far past her preferred style, tickling her neck and barely brushing against her shoulders.

They were meeting with the doctors this afternoon to discuss options; Danny's hand, whether surgery would help. Maddie paused, clutching the towel to her chest. When the physician had first mentioned going under the knife, Danny had turned grey.

Fear made goosebumps crawl across her exposed skin. He'd looked so...stricken at the idea. Danny hadn't been able to tell them what accident had caused the injury to his hand, but whatever it was had left its mark on her son. Remembered or not, the trauma lingered.

"Let's get there early," she told Jack from the doorway of the bathroom as he pulled on an undershirt. Clean jumpsuits lay waiting spread across the bed, hers blue and small, his a warm, bright orange that took up half the mattress. "I want to talk to this surgeon first, before the meeting with Danny."

"He's a grown boy, Maddie. We're talking about his surgery, he ought to be in on it."

"I know, and of course he needs to talk with them, but… Maybe there are other options. Maybe we can figure those out first."

The inventor in her refused to believe in a single option to Danny's dilemma, just as much as the mother rebelled at the idea of her son undergoing surgery a second time. It had been frightening enough the first time, even if it was to save his life.

When Danny had miraculously reappeared at their kitchen table, everything had spun into fast motion. Maddie's driving had rivaled Jack's as she drove the GAV at breakneck speed to the nearest hospital, all the while trying to call Jack from her cell to give him the good news and ignoring Danny's protests that he was "fine". Then he'd stepped out of the GAV and promptly collapsed.

She must have made a dramatic figure, kicking open the doors to the ER with Danny in her arms. Maddie had been prepared to have the paperwork filed at blaster point if necessary, but with all the news coverage, they were immediately recognizable and Danny had been whisked away, first to an exam room, and then into surgery.

As grueling as those first taut, silent hours in the waiting room had been, this time was somehow worse; now Maddie had time to anticipate.

That it had to be hand surgery of all things… she could understand Danny's fear all the more vividly thanks to her recent experiments with the GIW. She'd thought little of the procedures at the time, comfortable in the delusion that dismembering Phantom was no more harmful than removing pieces from a cadaver. Looking back, remembering the exposed flesh, green-white bone flashing through the oozing, gelatinous ectoplasmic blood, the way it had _writhed_ when she'd pulled the tendons free…

Maddie snatched up the hair dryer. Now was not the time. She had Danny to think of.

Jack, who had stepped into the bathroom behind her, stopped her, concern flickering up through the distraction. "Mads..."

Maddie glanced down at herself and saw the nearly-healed wounds in her arm and shoulder. That was right; he hadn't seen her without a shirt since before she came home. He wouldn't have seen her new scars yet. Too busy, and too anxious. They'd even been neglecting each other lately, she realized with a pang.

He traced the pitted marks on her skin, the pink, raw new skin that would slowly fade to white, still just weeks old. "What happened?"

"It was an accident. When I-" Maddie choked on the words; she couldn't bring herself to say it. She'd told Jack where she'd been and what she'd done, despite the confidentiality contracts. He deserved to know why she hadn't been there for him and for Danny. Still, there were things she'd found herself glossing over, details she hoped he'd never have to understand. She wanted to forget them herself.

"After one of the...experiments Phantom had a bad reaction. It wrecked the lab. I fell on some instruments."

His hand tightened on her shoulder reflexively. "What did he do?"

"He helped me, Jack." She looked up at him and shook her head helplessly. "He was bleeding and hurt and _he _helped _me._"

Jack relaxed, stepping back and scratching a chin still bristling with dark morning stubble. "That doesn't sound much like a ghost."

"It's like this ghost. I'm telling you Jack, he was different. He had physical attributes, ones that let him connect to reality in a completely different way than other ecto-entities. He could feel; he could respond to me like a human would. Now, I don't even know what happened to him."

Most likely, he was dead. There hadn't been much of him left; he'd been skin and bones by the end of her stay. Helping him escape the GIW had been useless after all.

Jack sat on the bed, making the mattress creak, and pulled the jumpsuit on over his feet. He paused, arm halfway through one sleeve, and looked at her thoughtfully. "Maddie. Once Danny's feeling better, we should take a vacation, don't you think?"

"Jack, I don't know if-"

"It'll be fun! We could take the Fenton Blimp and do a little ghost scan in the Catskills." His blue eyes squinted into a grin. "Who knows what we might find, right?"

Maddie felt a smile of her own curving her face. "Have I told you what a wonderful husband you are?"

Jack grinned and struck a pose. "Only ten times this week."

"Have I told you how sorry I am?"

"Too many times now. Forget it; you couldn't know." He wrapped her in a hug. "What are the odds that Phantom would be captured and our son would go missing at the same time?"

Something dark and queasy twisted inside her at the words. The two boys were linked, she knew that much from studying Phantom. The ghost had drawn his imprint, the essence of his identity, from her son; but Danny's disappearance and Phantom's capture were two unrelated incidents. Weren't they?

* * *

"So what really happened, dude?"

Danny stirred the pudding in his cup, not looking at Tucker. That was the question he'd been hoping neither of them would ask.

He'd been lucky so far; the near-constant parade of doctors and police and news reporters in his room had given them no chance for a private talk. As much as he hated the nurses with their staring and prodding and needles, he'd been sorry to see the dour-faced woman who'd brought him lunch walk out and leave the three of them alone. It was easy to lie to adults and strangers. But he'd never kept anything-anything important-from Sam and Tuck. Well, almost.

He'd never told them just how close Pariah had come to crushing him, exoskeleton and all. Or exactly what Vlad had done to him to try to get him to morph that time they rescued him from Colorado. Or, in a future that almost repeated itself, that they had come close enough to burning alive, he could smell their singed hair.

There were things they didn't ever have to know. Things that there weren't really words for. Neither of them understood that.

Are you sure you don't mind us eating in front of you, Danny?" Sam asked. She kicked Tuck, who already had a third of his burger in his mouth. "We can wait."

Tucker swallowed and nodded sheepishly, stuffing the half-wrapped burger back into its greasy bag.

"No, it's fine. Really." Danny waved his spoon at the pudding cup pinned between his knees."I've got lunch. Besides," he added when they looked doubtful, "The smell of that tofu melt pretty much cancels out the meat."

"Hey," Sam protested.

Tucker snickered. "Face it Sam, that's food only a mother could love."

"Mother nature you mean," Sam retorted. "Soy-based products are sustainable, unlike that dead hunk of cow you have over there." Sam retrieved the strong-smelling sandwich out of her own bag and waved it in Tucker's direction.

The boy sniffed delicately, then wrinkled his nose. "Pretty sure that thing's been through the cycle a couple of times already." Sam muttered something unintelligible and took a bite.

Danny stuck a heaping spoonful of the pudding in his mouth, relishing the chocolate flavoring with its slightly plastic aftertaste. He swallowed and let the cool almost-liquid slide down his throat. They were finally letting him eat, after more than a week of nothing but IV fluids and water.

Tuck had offered to smuggle him in a burger and fries, but Danny decided grudgingly to trust the doctors on this one. He still remembered vividly the first night home, when he'd spent the first couple of hours at the hospital puking up a vile mixture of peanut butter, orange juice, and blood.

Turns out it was kind of stupid to gorge on junk food after not eating for a month and a half. It was more than his shriveled-up insides could handle. The doctors had actually been forced to go inside and sew up the hole he'd ruptured in his stomach. It left a four-inch incision, just below his ribs on the left side, sewed up neatly and yellow with antiseptic.

They were keeping him on some kind of meds for it, so the pain was mostly dull, except when the stitches caught on the rough fabric of the hospital gown. That sent little claws of pain deep into his skin, and made him almost want to throw up again. Almost.

Danny tried not to slouch in a way that irritated the stitches and took another bite of pudding.

Their food was demolished to nothing but greasy wrappers way too quickly for Danny's taste. He took tiny bites, meticulously scraping together each spoonful.

"Danny."

"Yeah?" He looked up at his friends. They'd pulled the cushioned hospital chairs up until they were almost touching the bed, Sam curled up in one, Tuck perched on the edge of the second. The teenaged technogeek had never really gotten over his phobia of hospitals, and with no food to distract him he looked more than a little pale. But there was an obstinate determination in his eyes, and he held onto the chair arm like an anchor.

"I know you're enjoying your pudding and all, but cut us some slack, okay? We thought you were dead for a while. " Tucker said it almost like a joke, but Danny could hear the tension under his best friend's casual tone. "What happened to you?"

Danny winced. Tuck was right; it wasn't like they'd had some pleasant, stress-free summer that he'd be ruining for them. They'd been worried, really worried. They deserved some kind of answer, at least.

"Okay," he said quietly. "Just give me a minute to get started, okay? It's not..."

The pudding was already gone. He scraped the spoon around the bottom of the little plastic cup, trying to formulate words to go with what his summer had been like, what he could possibly say. It had been five weeks, buried in the cold underground lab, stuck under glaring white lights like slide in a microscope. He'd felt like a bug, crushed under some cosmic thumb as the universe watched him squirm. And then they'd...she'd...started pulling off his limbs...

Danny looked up and realized he'd trailed off again. He must seem loopy to them. He hoped they'd blame it on the pain meds.

He tried again. "It's not easy to talk about."

Sam's warm hand rested on his knee and gave it a squeeze through the sheets. "We're not going anywhere."

She said it like it was supposed to be comforting. He'd always liked that about her, that ironclad firmness, that self-assurance of doing the right thing and sticking in there no matter what anybody said. Now it just made him feel trapped.

Danny didn't want to talk. He didn't want to tell them. Not lies, and definitely not the truth-not all of it, at least. For the first time in his life, Danny wished his two friends weren't there for him. Even if it made him feel like the king of all jerks, he wished they'd go away.

The seconds ticked away, and they just sat there, waiting. As he knew they would. He had learned to count on it.

Danny cleared his throat twice before any more words would come out. The pleasant moisture of the chocolate pudding was long gone, leaving the taste of plastic in his mouth.

"It was Dash's fault to start with. You know, at football camp. On the first night there, of course he decided to pick on the one nerdy kid." It felt like an eon ago, dredging up these old memories from before the GIW. Like they'd happened to a different person altogether. That almost made it easier. Danny relaxed a little as the words finally took shape. "He said it was a hazing, but I'd bet nobody else had ever had to do it. They wanted me to steal Teslaff's stuff-her razor and that notebook she always carries around."

"And you actually did it?" Sam's voice was colored with disapproval. He could see the "don't be a sheep" rant just waiting to spring off her lips.

He shrugged, half a smile finding its way onto his face at the way her eyes sparked in irritation over his indifference. "I figured if I impressed them early on, they'd get off my back. It was either that or a month full of wedgies and mockery. Tough call."

Tucker shuddered. "I think I'd put up with the wedgies. Ms. Teslaff is a monster; doesn't she sleep with that notebook? And the razor...what the heck, man. That would be in her bag with all her girl stuff. You'd have to go through her like, toiletries. If you got caught you'd look like some kind of weird perv."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Hello Tuck, ghost boy? Invisibility powers? Stealing it would be a cinch."

"Stealing it?" Danny echoed. "Yeah, that was easy. Giving it to Dash with his gang watching, that's where I screwed up."

"What's to get wrong? It's handing over a book." Tucker leaned back and brushed a few crumbs out of his cargo pants. "Big whoop."

"How about standing too close to the edge of a cliff and falling off like a spazz?" Danny muttered. He stared mournfully into the empty pudding cup, stabbing it with the spoon.

"You fell?" Sam gasped, grabbing his knee again as if he was somehow in danger of falling off the bed, too.

"Well, not really. I was out of sight as soon as I went over, so I went ghost. I decided to wait around for a while, then show up at the cabins like nothing happened just to freak Dash and the other guys out."

"Serve them right," Sam muttered. "They could have gotten you killed."

"Sam, I can't feel my kneecap."

She blushed and released him. "Oh, sorry."

"I was just about to head back when my ghost sense went off. I thought it was weird, sensing something in the middle of the woods. So I went to check it out."

"And then?" Tuck leaned forward, eyes gleaming with interest. Danny wondered morbidly if Tucker would be so eager if he really knew what would follow.

"I got caught," Danny said simply. He pushed let the empty cup and spoon rest in his lap, leaning back in the pillows and closing his eyes. He was tired. Exhausted, really. Maybe they'd go away if they thought he was sleeping. Maybe they wouldn't have to know the rest.

He could hear them shifting uneasily in their chairs, putting two and two together. It was no good.

"You mean... Skulker? No, we went after him, he didn't have anything. Then someone human? The... " Tucker paused, frowning in thought.

_Don't figure it out_, Danny thought, hoping Desiree had suddenly developed telepathy. _Just forget it_.

"It couldn't be... the Guys in White? That government group?"

The GIW. Their trap in the woods. The long journey rattling around in the back of a sedan in a clunky government ripoff of the Fenton Thermos. He hadn't been terribly impressed, not by the immaculate and scowling agents, the lab that was almost as full of scientific equipment as his parents' basement, or the high-tech and completely inescapable force field cage and shackle they'd put him in. It was only his mom's appearance that threw him. That's when he really started to worry, because she was serious; and with the GIW there, he'd had to keep his secret whether he wanted to or not.

"Yeah."

"Oh my gosh, Danny, those creeps?" He put off opening his eyes, not wanting to see the horrified look that would go with Sam's tone.

"What did they want with you?"

"What do you think, Tucker?" Sam snapped. "What happens to any living thing that gets put in a lab?"

"Nonliving," Danny corrected absently. "I don't count as a living thing."

Sam grabbed his arm, startling him into opening his eyes. He was met with a wide, angry violet glare, the glowering expression made even blacker by her black eyeliner. She squeezed his arm tightly. "Yeah you do, Danny! What are you talking about?"

"To them, I mean," he corrected hastily, pulling his arm from her grip. "I wasn't human, so it didn't matter. To some of them, I think it wouldn't have mattered even if they did know." He remembered one tall GIW operative, with his ever-present scowl and spotless suit coat. That man had been in charge, and he'd seemed to have a particular dislike for all ghosts in general...and Danny in particular.

"That's messed up, man." Tucker's eyes flashed behind his glasses.

"Those evil, heartless..." Sam was livid. Like he knew she'd be. He wondered what she'd think of his mom, once she found out. If she found out.

"Not all of them were bad," he said quietly. "I didn't get away on my own."

"Of course, they wouldn't just let you go. So what happened? Did someone help you escape? Is that how you hurt your hand?"

Mom had come around in the end. She might not have figured out the truth, but she cared about him. It just took her a while. In the end she had helped him, and he was alive, and he was back home. That was all that mattered... right?

"Danny? Hey, earth to space cadet, do you copy?"

"Huh?" His two friends stared at him. He tried to scramble back onboard with the conversation, but he couldn't remember where it had left off. He smashed the empty cup with his spoon-vindictively, as if it was somehow at fault. "Sorry," he muttered. "Spaced out."

A beat too late, Tucker laughed. "Dude. Hook me up with whatever they're giving you. If I could doze through senior year like that it'd be a breeze."

"Danny," Sam's hand was on his arm again, warm and strong. "If you can't talk about it yet, it's okay. We just want to know what's up with you, that's all. No rush. Right, Tuck?"

Danny nodded, feeling ashamed of his earlier resentment. Of course they were just worried about him; he knew that.

Sam sat back, looking satisfied. Danny smiled at them, then dropped his eyes to his lap, fiddling with the dented cup. Tucker shifted, then coughed loudly.

"I notice nobody asked me how my summer went," he declared. "Did I tell you what my cousins and I did while we were at the beach? Well, you know it was prime bikini season, and J.D. had his itching powder…"

As Tuck chattered on, Sam quietly pulled her chair around and completely casually draped her arm onto the bed, so it rested against his. Danny found his fingers curling around her fingertips; her chipped black nails had tiny, smiling green ghosts on them.

* * *

_Part 1: Ties that Bind_ ::_ tbc..._

* * *

**A/N:** Okay folks, one more chapter of this foundation-laying stuff and then we can really get things moving. I'm going to try to keep this note short, since I'm out of town and posting from a coffee shop.

Many thanks to my beta readers, **MyAibou** and **Phantomrose96. **Any mistakes are completely due to me being impatient and making last-minute tweaks.

And wow, thanks for the awesome response! I got snowballed by reviews, which is an incredible problem to have...

I'm really psyched that many of the fans of PoT are sticking around for the sequel. It was wonderful to see a bunch of familiar faces, and if I'm not mistaken, some new readers as well! Thank you to the anons (welcome back to Lacy and Cotom, among others!), too. I'm so glad you share my excitement for this fic. :)

-Hj


	3. As Clumsy as You've Been

Sam let the bustle of the Nasty Burger wash over her, sipping at the cool root beer in her hand. The cheerfully greasy atmosphere felt familiar and comforting after the sterile, tense hospital room with its blinding white hallways and their gleaming tile floors. A little mundane grunge was just what they needed right now.

"Mocha espresso shake please," Tucker ordered. He slumped against the counter at the cash register. "And make it a double."

The two of them had gravitated here in a moody silence, returning to the fast food hangout more out of habit than hunger. They'd been all smiles leaving Danny, but it hadn't lasted past the elevator ride to the lobby. Neither of them felt like talking about it just yet.

"Back again, Foley?" The redhead behind the register flashed him a winning smile, one gleaming with an array of dental hardware. Her name tag labeled her as Vicky, and she had the unique distinction of being the only female who seemed to enjoy Tucker's less-than-suave attentions. Not that she'd ever gone so far as to date him.

"Just give me my caffeine, okay?"

Vicky huffed and snatched the offered cash, punching in his order.

He shuddered and added, more to Sam, "I don't do hospitals."

"You went to see Danny?" Valerie came in from the back, two paper bags and a milkshake in her hands. She set them on the counter, her hands lingering as she glanced from Sam to Tucker.

"Oh, hey Valerie," Tucker nodded to their classmate. She had her dark curly hair pinned at the nape of her neck, and wore the restaurant's red and white polo.

"Where else would we be?" Sam muttered, reaching for the bag. She didn't want to talk about Danny, she wanted to talk to him. Not that she could blame him for not wanting to talk about… about being studied, but those unsaid things made a void between them. It gnawed at her. How could they be his best friends if they didn't even know what he'd been through?

Her hands closed over the warm, slightly greasy paper bag, but Valerie didn't let go. Sam looked up and found herself studied by sharp green eyes. "How is he?"

She blinked at the open concern in Valerie's gaze. She sometimes forgot that the other girl considered herself a friend; one that really cared about Danny. The half of him she wasn't planning to hunt down and murder, at least.

"The news stopped covering him after he moved out of intensive care," Valerie added, crumpling the top of the bag. "The last thing we got was that interview."

"He's doing okay," Sam said with more confidence than she felt. She freed the paper from Valerie's grip.

Tucker pocketed his change and shifted over to snatch up his mocha shake. He grabbed a straw and stabbed it through the lid. "He looks tons better than last week. They have a surgery thing planned for Monday to fix some of the stuff in his hand, or else he'd be home already." Tucker gave Sam a quick glance, then added, "Look, why don't you go see him yourself? Visiting hours don't end 'til eight on the weekends."

"Can't, second job." Valerie looked away, frowning. "It kind of, uh, gets in the way, you know?"

Tuck nodded. "We get it; more than you think."

Valerie might not know it, but they were more than familiar with her other "job" and its health hazards. A ghost hunter who had been busy building up grudges over the summer would be a magnet for ghost trouble. It probably wasn't the brightest idea for her to hang around in a hospital and put the patients at risk.

As if on cue, Valerie's watch beeped. She stiffened and glanced out the windows, then at the dining area with its sparse late lunch crowd. "Break time, gotta go."

"Again?!" Her co-worker wailed. "You so owe me tips for this, Gray!"

Tucker and Sam exchanged worried glances.

The foundations of the building shook ever so slightly, and a chill just brushed their backs. Sam glanced around; everything had taken on an unearthly cast, even under the bland industrial lighting. Sam grabbed Tucker's elbow and pulled him into the nearest empty booth, ducking low.

An unearthly figure glided down through the ceiling to the place where they'd stood just seconds ago. For a ghost, she wasn't exactly intimidating at first glance: A large, grandmotherly woman, with a pink plaid kerchief tied over her netted white hair, a white apron tied around her waist. She floated up to the counter and gazed down at the petrified cashier.

"C-can I take your order, m'am?" Vicky bleated; customer service training seemed to kick in at the absence of coherent thought.

"Hello there, young lady," the ghost said in a sugary-sweet voice. Vicky relaxed a fraction. Sam and Tucker tensed." Is it true that someone changed the burger recipe?"

"Y-yes, ma'am! The Nasty Burger is now twenty percent less fat and one hundred percent tastier!" Vicky rattled off the sale pitch, then cringed back as the ghost's aura flared dangerously.

Green flames licked over her grey hair as she scowled. "Tastier? That burger was a classic!"

"Oh man," Tucker muttered under his breath.

Sam crouched a little lower, glancing around the room. At least most of the customers had been further away. They were edging their way in twos and threes toward the back door. "Where's the Thermos?"

The Fenton device had become their go-to solution to ghost problems while Danny was gone; it took a lot more maneuvering and the element of surprise to catch a ghost without beating it first, but she and Tucker had managed. So far. With the smaller ghosts. The Lunch Lady wasn't exactly a picnic to deal with, not if you didn't have ghost powers.

Tuck clutched his mocha shake, tugging his beret a little lower on his head. "I left it at home!"

"If you have a complaint you can fill out our Nasty Comment Card and place it in the-"

Vicky shrieked as the ghost crushed the comment box with a flaming fist. "That's the problem with kids these days, not listening!" Splinters of the doomed box scattered across the counter, leaving little scorched skid marks on the stainless steel surface.

"Tucker!" Sam hissed.

"Hey, it's really heavy. I'll be a hunchback before I'm twenty if I keep carrying it around!"

"At this rate you won't live to see twenty!"

"S-sorry?" Vicky squeaked out, wobbling between terror and confusion.

"Sorry's not good enough!" Burgers flew off the warming racks in the back and orbited the ghost like maddened wasps. "Don't you know that these diet fads will always turn against you!"

One of the cooked burgers veered off and sped bullet-like toward the cashier. Vicky shrieked and ducked behind the counter. Metalware clanged uselessly together. The burger splatted against the back wall, leaving a burn hole of sizzling grease.

The ghost chuckled low in her throat. "Would you like fries with that?"

Tucker winced and slouched even lower. "I guess we'll have to rely on Plan B, then." A smile tugged at his lips. "Or as I like to call it, Plan V."

Right on cue, Valerie zoomed in through the open door, clad head to toe in black and red body armor. Crouched low so she could fly through the doorway, the top of her jet sled brushed the upholstery of the booths as she flew across the dining area.

"Hey, ghost!" she shouted out. "You got a beef with the Nasty Burger? You'll have to get through me!"

The Lunch Lady whipped around and growled, gloved fists clenching.

"The beef is mine!" she roared. There was a rumble and a wave of cold air, then dozens of pink-red frozen patties flew out of the back, coating the ghost in a protective layer of raw meat. Greasy steam rose from her hulking meat shoulders as the hot burgers fused with the frozen, raw meat.

"I knew I should have taken that job at Abyss!" Vicky wailed, out of sight behind the counter.

"I'll only tell you this once, you undead freak!" Valerie shouted, leveling an ectoblast and firing off a shot of bright red energy. "Get out of my grill!"

"That's a recipe for disaster," the ghost snapped, whipping out one meat-clad arm like a wrecking ball.

The ghost hunter ducked and swept past in a smooth arc, slicing deep into the Lunch Lady's meat armor with a black and red blade that materialized on her wrist. She looped around the ghost and circled back, shaving another chunk off the top. Chunks of meat fell to the floor with a wet splat. Sam winced and shuddered, Tucker looked aghast.

The ghost waved a hand; the meat closed over like it had never been touched.

Vicky scrambled around the counter and darted for the door, clutching the tip jar to her chest. Lunch Lady pointed a gloved finger at the retreating cashier, and hot, greasy fluid shot out.

Valerie fired a blast, knocking the ghost's aim off. The grease sizzled into the floor to the right of Vicky's tennis shoes as the girl dragged the side door open and ran out.

The ghost snarled and turned on Valerie. Valerie dodged away and zoomed out into the eating area, doubling back.

Rockets shot off her sled and at the same time her suit created cannons on her shoulders and she fired with both barrels. All four strikes hit the ghost at once. The Lunch Lady gave a terrible shriek and exploded. Hot, sizzling, half-cooked meat splattered everywhere, onto the tables, chairs, and unfortunate customers who had gotten trapped.

Sam jumped at the sting of the hot oil as a few pieces dropped onto her hair and shoulders. Out of the corner of her eye she just caught a glimpse of something red and pink slinking behind the counter.

The Red Huntress, as the newscasters had dubbed the mysterious ghost fighting girl, surveyed the room and spotted Sam and Tucker, clutching their purchases and peeking out over one of the booths.

"You two? I thought you'd already…well, nevermind. Get out of here." She jerked her thumb toward the door. "This isn't over yet."

Tucker stood, dusting hamburger meat out of his hair and looking mournfully at it. "What a waste."

Sam shuddered and quickly did the same; hamburger was disgusting enough on a bun where it was supposed to be. The little noodles of processed meat looked like bloody pink worms. In fact...they were wiggling….no, they flew. Off, out of sight, across the counter, followed by the bigger chunks faster and faster.

"Va- uh, ghost huntress," Sam pointed. "The meat's recollecting!"

"I see it," Valerie muttered, an ecto gun materializing in her hand. She cocked it and jumped back on her sled, rising slowly to hover a few feet off the tile. "Now get out of here, unless you like being target practice for a walking meatball."

"Yes ma'am," Tucker said, grabbing Sam's hand and tugging her toward the door. "Let's go, Sam."

They dashed out the door and across the parking lot, where most of the Nasty Burger patrons were milling about, waiting. Ghost attacks had become so routine that people rarely screamed and ran in terror for more than a block or so.

Tucker and Sam slipped through the crowd and crossed the street, where a bench took up a tiny patch of grass behind the sidewalk. Tucker flung himself down on it, unloading his burden of paper bags and drinks. Sam plopped down beside him with a sigh. The ground shook again.

Tuck looked at Sam and grinned. "Three, two, one…"

Windows shattered, sending the rubberneckers scrambling out of the parking lot and back to a more reasonable distance. A whirlwind of meat flowed out the front door, reassembling itself into a massive, lumpy creature with stubby arms and legs and wicked green eyes. It hovered just above the NB sign like a misshapen blimp.

"I've ordered you a combo of pain!" The gruff female voice boomed out over the restaurant's parking lot. Lunch Lady took a stand just above her creation, burgers and chicken nuggets swirling around her in a greasy miasma.

"That's some nasty sauce, right there," Tucker commented.

Sam rolled her eyes. "Come on,Tuck, you can do better than that."

"Get back here, ghost!"

Tuck whistled as the ghost huntress streaked out of the building on her jet sled and executed an acrobatic flying kick to the face of the meat monster. "That's some _hot sauce_ right-"

Sam emptied the soda on Tucker's head, drenching his red beret and sending ice cascading down his shoulders.

"Hey!"

"At least once Danny's back to normal we'll have some decent banter again." She tossed the empty cup into the the nearby trash can.

"I think you've forgotten how bad his puns can get," Tuck retorted. "You just like him, so he gets away with it. What's the saying again? Absence makes the crush grow stronger?"

Sam held up Tucker's extra-large cup threateningly. "I have another one of these."

"Fine, fine, don't destroy my mocha shake!" Tucker snatched it from her hands and cradled it to his chest. "This is a work of art, you know." He paused, the grin falling from his face. "You do… you do think he'll go back to normal, right?"

Sam rolled her heels against the pavement, biting her lip. The shouts and explosions from across the parking lot seemed miles away, fading into familiar background noise. Just thinking about what Danny must have been through made her blood boil; she had to remind herself not to crush the bag and their french fries in her grip.

_Experiment. Test subject._ The words brought terrifying images to mind, of animals in cages in sterile white rooms, sad heaps of mangy fur with wild, white-rimmed, pleading eyes.

It was a little too easy for Sam to make the connection with the Danny in that hospital room. He tried to hide it, but it was there, all the same; the way Danny sat, how he talked, that nervous twitch every time the door opened unexpectedly. He was frail, watchful, cautious. Things the doctors couldn't wrap up in neat white bandages and hide under clean sheets.

Danny had been hurt before; once or twice, bad enough he had to stay in bed for a few days… but this was different. Sam wasn't used to seeing him look… timid.

"This is Danny we're talking about," she said finally. Then more forcefully, as if to make herself believe it, "Danny will be fine. He's come through everything else being half-ghost has thrown at him."

"True." Tucker brushed a few ice cubes off his shoulder and grinned at her wryly. "Whether we want him to be or not, he's always got to be the hero."

Sam frowned, tearing open the fries. "You'd think he'd know better than to try to pull a hero-face bluff on us by now."

"You're forgetting he's got an overprotective streak the size of Lake Erie. The kind with one 'E.'"

She snagged a couple of fries, then dropped the bag into Tucker's outstretched hands. "If he thinks he can 'protect' us from helping him, he's more delusional than I thought."

Yet another explosion rocked the block. The resulting meat shower almost reached their bench. A meatball-sized piece rolled up against the toe of Sam's black boot. She kicked it away. It hissed at her, baring tiny needle fangs, then scampered back toward the main body.

"At least we don't have to worry about the ghost problem," Tuck observed. "Well, no more than usual. We've got to make sure that Danny knows that so he doesn't try to go ghost 'til he's- you know. Up to it."

As the ghost focused on rebuilding her meat creature, Valerie flew back a dozen yards and knelt on her board. A bulky device materialized on her shoulder, with odd bits of green and silver mixed into her usual black and red. She took careful aim and fired, with a recoil hard enough to push her sled back a couple of yards.

The blast hit home at the center of the lunch-lady's ample bosom. It seemed to punch a sharp indent through the ghost's chest. The Lunch Lady looked down, puzzled, as the air just in front of her rippled, twisted, and tore. Green light flashed, and the ghost seemed to contract, like a sheet caught in a vacuum hose. Her angry wail echoed against the cheers of the onlookers as she was sucked in and vanished.

"Anonymously donating the Fenton Bazooka was a stroke of brilliance, by the way," Sam commented, watching as the green swirling portal flickered and disappeared, taking the defeated Lunch Lady with it. Valerie had transformed into a much more effective ghost deterrent with the portal-creating weapon. It was a lot easier to banish a ghost to the zone than it was to completely destroy them. They tended to bounce back in nasty ways.

Tucker leaned back and took a long sip of his mocha shake, smirking around the straw. "I do have my moments."

* * *

"Do you have the slightest inkling of the measure of scrutiny this organization has fallen under?"

Agent L looked up from his seat behind the desk and said nothing. It was hot here on the first floor with the faulty air conditioning, and he was in no mood to pander to condescending, obvious questions.

Doctor Kerza's lip curled in disgust. "The media is having a field day." He flung the papers onto the desk; they fluttered and fell in Agent L's line of sight, headlines glaring from them in bold block print.

FAMILY SEPARATED IN MOMENT OF NEED

LOST SON, ABSENT MOTHER, NEGLIGENT GOVERNMENT

RED TAPE THICKER THAN BLOOD?

The agent pushed them aside irritably, straightening the careful stack of documents that occupied the center of the desk. Dr. Kerza was a small, crisp man, with an attitude that far outweighed his stature.

"If you're looking for a dog to kick, Dr. Kerza, the perpetrators are long gone." His own distaste mirrored the doctor's sour expression. "My 'promotion' is merely a consequence of a series of departures." More accurately, the real movers and shakers had fled safely into anonymity, leaving only a skeleton of "inconsequentials" in place to be exposed should the facility be forced into the public eye. Not nearly the honor "Facility Head" should imply.

He was, of course, fully aware of the disastrous media storm that the incompetent upper management had brought down on their heads. That abominable Jack Fenton had told anyone who would listen how the government was keeping him from his wife. It was a small mercy that their department had never been mentioned by name.

The doctor glanced at him keenly through rimless, rectangular lenses."Higher-ups weaseling out of personal responsibility, hm? The American government never fails to disappoint."

It had taken hours of filling out forms and a few veiled threats of blackmail to prevent the facility from being closed down altogether. Only the marked technological advances of the past year had saved them, and only just. Projects like Silver Mist and the Electromagnetic Disruptor had been direct results of their research, something the government was forced to acknowledge as essential to national ghost defense. As it was, funding had been halved, and with all the angry public inquiry, they'd held onto their confidential status by a thread.

Dr. Kerza snatched up the accusatory papers and tossed them in the wastebasket, then turned on his heel. "Hurry up and show me this rare specimen of yours; I may as well have a look before the misguided champions of social justice kick down our doors."

They moved speedily through security, something Agent L found frustrating to no end. His security team had been reduced to a handful of men. It was a pathetically thin shield between the outside world and the dangers of ghost research. Although, he noted with a touch of pride, the remaining staff was as dedicated and vigilant as ever.

"You are at least well-equipped," Kerza said grudgingly, taking in the well-shielded lab and its armament of ghost study and containment devices. "Though I suppose that's not surprising, considering the monopoly you've given yourselves through the patent office."

"We're protecting the interests of the human race, Dr. Kerza. That constitutes a significant basis for prioritizing our research, don't you think?"

"Hmm, I suppose." He nodded at the cube Agent L had brought in. "Is that the specimen?"

"Yes." Agent L activated the containment unit and attached the cube to the side of the force field.

The cube hissed and a green mist billowed out into the space behind the glass. It hovered nebulous in the air, then gathered and condensed, congealing into a large, faintly glowing mass. All at once it dropped to the floor with a wet slap.

The two men stared speechlessly at the oozing pool of goo. No ghost. No signs of life at all.

"What, may I ask, is _that_ supposed to be? Surely not Phantom."

Agent L checked the barcode on the cube a second time. "This is the device that contained ecto-entity 0013. There's no mistake."

The scientist arched a skeptical eyebrow. "You're telling me that your most advanced and valuable specimen just melted away?"

"Dr. Fenton did suggest such an outcome was possible," Agent L said slowly, approaching the holding cell. "Phantom was showing signs of arbitrary destabilization." He frowned down at the green substance, suspicion flickering at the back of his mind. He was not so certain Dr. Fenton could be trusted; her attitude in the final phase of her testing had been... suspect, to say the least.

"I've read her reports, yes," Dr. Kerza snapped. "Her reasoning was faulty; Phantom was too strongly ideated to simply dissolve. It should have reached a state of reduced mass which its core could continue to support, and then stabilized. No ghost would spontaneously evaporate after such a simple battery of tests, certainly not a specimen of such remarkable physical density."

"So you don't think this," Agent L waved his hand, "is Phantom?"

"That's something of a paradox, isn't it?" Dr. Kerza adjusted his glasses and peered down at the substance. "Did the ghost check itself out of cold storage and stroll away, leaving a few gallons of ectoplasmic matter behind?"

The agent's eyes narrowed. "That may not be as fanciful as you seem to find it, doctor."

"In any case I think it would be wise to question the scientist who last had possession of Phantom. I should also run some tests; if this is indeed the entity's remains, data from the ectoplasmic residue could be enlightening."

"You are not permitted to have contact outside of the facility." Agent L paused, and added grudgingly, "Except in cases of family emergency."

"Oh yes, I forgot we're a 'top government secret' and all that nonsense." Dr. Kerza was already pulling on a pair of heavy hazmat gloves, dark eyes running over the array of equipment on the laboratory shelves. "Not everyone is under such restrictions, am I correct?" He selected a vacuum-type device. "Surely the Facility Head could elect two government-approved emissaries to track the good doctor down and find out a few details, hmm? Make sure someone with an actual mind for science goes along, not just you militant secret agent types."

Agent L bristled. "I don't recall you outranking me, Dr. Kerza."

"Let's not get petty, agent. If I don't find a reason to keep this facility going, there will be no facility. Unless you want to say farewell to your ghost research, you'll see that things go my way." If Dr. Kerza could feel how the agent was glaring behind his shades, he didn't show it. "Now stand aside, I need that sample."

* * *

_Ties that Bind: tbc..._

* * *

A/N: Hello, friends, and Happy Halloween! Here's a bit of a change of pace for you, and is that a plot I spy?

I had the pleasure of working with three betas this time round: **MyAibou**, **Lexie Piper**, and **Anneriawings**. Thank you ladies for your hard work, patience, and tireless typo-catching!

To the anons, **Toni**, **Julia**, **S** and **Sparky** among others, thanks for your awesome reviews!

Also, please note: I will be doing Nanowrimo this November, since I promised my boy I'd come up with some original fic this year. **Therefore, the next chapter of SoaD will go up in December.**

One last thing: AnneriaWings and I are posting a collaborative fanfic in honor of Halloween! Make sure to check out her account later tonight for the DP horror fic, **It Takes You**. If you dare. 0_0

ETA: Thanks rxu for catching my formatting flub!

-Hj


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